


to the depths of my lungs

by aosc



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-09 23:11:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11679069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: She looks up at him. His breathing is quiet, his gaze caught on her collar. She reaches up, by her own accord or pulled in by the moment, she can scarcely tell. He does not shy away from her touch, even as she wraps her own fingers around his. Catches them in the crook of her nails, of her skin against his. “Where do you place your faith, Nyx Ulric?”





	to the depths of my lungs

**Author's Note:**

> tracks (that were abused while writing this): 
> 
> moon tattoo — sofi tukker  
> stealing fire — bob moses  
> grace — cyril hahn feat. kotomi  
> heal me (i'm from finland remix) — arctic lake  
> lips — the xx  
> cinnamon (acoustic) — ritual

* * *

**  
751 —**

 

Lunafreya is allowed to enter the rain soaked, supple wetlands of Galahd with an Imperial escort. Only after numerous clearances, checkpoints, and crawling, slippery ascents up muddy slopes by swollen riverbeds, do they make it.

 

It is all that she expects of an untamed land that someone with a foreign hand has attempted to curb — and yet not.

 

The Empire have taken up camp here, on the outskirts of where she can see wet smoke snake its way up from where pyres within a small collection of buildings rise out of the earth, farther into the embrace of the forest. She sees the long rows of war machines, gleaming metallic plating in the rain, limbs limp and powers off in their state of not immediate-conflict. She hears the metallic, jerky movements of the Magitek infantry that patrols their perimeters. On her way in, she notes not only a few, but several men she recognizes by their emblems and decorations as brigadier generals, and colonels, of the Imperial army.

 

She is given private quarters. Privacy within a military company is a funny definition, one that, in this case, leaves a sour tang on her tongue, given that it only pertains to the higher command.

 

The lower ranking soldiers, after all, are not men by definition, and thus, they are not bound by the traditional boundaries — and lack thereof, that constitutes the private and non-private business.

 

She sheds her bag in a corner of the small space, but retains her coat, not intending on staying within.

 

She is stopped, predictably, on her way out.

 

Brigadier General Tummelt scowls darkly at her. He has rid himself of his helmet, and his hair is already dripping with the incessant pour. “ _Princess_ Lunafreya,” he says, as though she is of particular distaste to him, “You are not to leave the premises without an escort.”

 

“Truly,” says Lunafreya, not without a razor between her teeth, “I was not aware.” She has to bite down on her tongue not to say anything else. This man, she makes herself remember, however implicit in what has happened here, has done her nothing. It will do her no good to make of him more of an enemy than he already seems to regard himself as.

 

His eyes narrow. “Don’t play coy with me,” he snaps, “You were permitted entry into this  _highly unstable_  region by the skin of your holy teeth. The chancellor shows you such leniency, Oracle, only because of your standing with the people. Trust me, if you so much as breathe wrongly in the company of these — _folk_ , there is no telling what might happen here.”

 

Lunafreya regards him with as much neutrality has she can muster. Her nails, blunt, bite into her slick palm. She imagines her teachings. Their beckon — her calling. She bows her head, at last.

 

“Of course, Brigadier General. I apologize for my stepping out of line. If you wouldn’t mind introducing me to my appointed escort, I would be most grateful.”

 

Brigadier General Tummelt looks as though he has swallowed something sour, such is the effect of her presence on him. He promptly spins on his heel.

 

“You will be escorted into the camp in the morning,” he says. It’s somewhat muffled by the added distance between them, “If the conditions are as horrible as they are now, it might not be at all. You’d better appease your gods, princess.”

 

*

 

At first light, when the hour bleeds into four, Lunafreya rouses.

 

She dresses quickly, and begets a proper meal for picking a bundle of fruits from her bag. She has grown out of her home sickness, like an article of clothing grown too tight over the shoulders. But she still finds that when she plucks the Ulwaat berries, a little soft and bruised, from between a white pear and a Pagla peach, she can feel it tugging at her like a tie that binds her to what is ultimately home.

 

She prays, in accordance to her routine, on the hard packed soil. On the thin mat that separates her from the earth, from where it smells musty, and wet. From this place that is so innately spiritual that she feels each and every person that inhabits the village like the beckon of an old friend at her shoulder.

 

At a quarter past seven, a Captain-rank soldier comes to take her past the final checkpoint before they reach the village. He does not look her in the eye, but he does her the base courtesy of addressing her by title, and she finds that it is not derogatory. She does not thank him, but she allows herself to incrementally relax. To not find that she has to resist the urge to snap around and protect her back, in fear of the strike of words, or the strike of something sharply deadly.

 

The village smells of wet smoke, as before. It smells of the river. Around its corners, the scurrying of small children are accompanied by the spirits that guard this spot from harm.

 

Lunafreya understands now, more than she did at the time of her arrival, why it is that Brigadier General Tummelt has not sacked this village, and ransomed its treasures. Why they have set up their perimeters, and why their Magitek troops patrol it on a static interval.

 

Her escort leaves her at the entrance to the village. He jerks his thumb backwards. “Return here, when you’re done. I’ll see you out.” He looks at her briefly. When she meets his gaze, he looks away with sudden startle. Resumes tracing shapes in the road before him. “M’lady.”

 

“Thank you, Captain,” she replies, in turn. She does not wait for him to leave.

 

The roads that wind around the cots and huts that make up the bulk of the village are all deserted, as she enters. Despite what she’s heard from outside of the clearance point: the muted talk of women. The pitter patter of rain being emptied from drainage pipes. The loud voices of unconcerned children, running up and down the alleyways between their homes.

 

Her stomach clenches. She does not take the Gods’ names in vain, but for this, she is almost inclined to. This injustice, done to these innocent people.

 

She almost meanders down the path, lost in a sinkhole of alien sensations that will swallow her up lest she takes proper care. These gods are not hers, and these traditions are, undoubtedly, not hers. But they are still gods, and these traditions, they are still revered by these people.

 

On this day, she has been led to this place. If she has been so by her Gods or by these Gods, these spirits, she cannot say. She only knows that the beckon is deep, it reverberates down her spine and makes her shiver. And this call, she must heed.

 

*

 

Down her path, she meets the village elder, a woman with hard eyes, her shoulders erect but her stance crowded.

 

The old woman’s hut smells of incense, of something stagnated. Lost in time. Lunafreya bows her head before it.

 

“Child,” says the elder, “I have heard you do not bow before your Gods. How is it that you do so before one such as I?”

 

Her voice is dry, scarcely used.

 

Lunafreya does not look up. “Before my Gods, it is not subservience that is my call. That is the only reason. I greet you as I would any elder of any people: with the respect that is duly reserved for those who harbor greater wisdom than myself.”

 

The elder’s rough chuckle takes her by surprise. “I hear you are well taught. Respect your elders; that is good, child. If you have such cause, certainly.”

 

She hears the faint rustle and shuffling of something, before the elder’s shadow is cast upon the dimly lit floor. Lunafreya looks up then. The elder’s lips have thinned out in something that is almost a smile, a touch fond — if such an emotion is admissible on someone who has made her acquaintance for scarcely a moment. She motions for Lunafreya to follow her deeper, into the belly of the hut.

 

She is served a deeply steeped black tea in translucent cups. The leaf blend remains in the bottom of the cup. When she drinks, she finds that it is strong, almost too strong to retain a sense of its original taste.

 

The elder’s name is Theia. She is of the lower Galahdian tribe. They were the first to be attacked, the tribe that still calls the riverbed its home, and also the first to surrender to Imperial conquest, after months and months of guerilla warfare pitted deep in the forest, where they had first retreated.

 

“I see you seated here before me, child,” says Theia, and curls her ornate fingers around her cup, “And I think that they have sent you here as the cure to the illness they brought with them. It’s certainly an irony of the cruelest sort.”

 

Lunafreya hesitates. “I do not come here as an emissary of any diplomat’s envoy,” she says then, slowly.

 

Theia cocks her head. She looks at Lunafreya with something very much like pity.

 

“The old ways are done. I am not fool enough to become blinded by age, nor by faith. I am well aware of the fact that your so called gods are revered now by the masses. That when mothers across these lands take her Lord’s name in her mouth, it is not the name that I will use in my own prayer. But tell me, Lunafreya, as you have been touched by this divinity: how you can remain so convinced, when the men who pray to your gods, can come into my village, to burn and to murder and to _take_. To plunder what is not theirs, to stake claim to things that will never rightfully be theirs.”

 

The elder woman’s voice has risen. Something in its foundation shakes, but she does not waver. When she continues, she does so looking straight at Lunafreya, “How come that they get to take from me one moon child, and deliver a new one to my hearth only when the wounds of old have just started to scab over? Tell me that there is anything in this world that will justify that.”

 

Lunafreya has let her tea off at the low table that separates her from the elder woman. Her knuckles are tight in her lap. Something is blocking off her throat, though she is loath to answer the question of what, and from where it originates. She is barely sure of what the elder is referring to, or talking of, but somewhere, it has coiled a fist inside of her, dropped something dark and impenetrable off to expand in her stomach. Lunafreya is not sure she will get it out, once she leaves.

 

Theia fixes her with her gaze again. It is blue, Lunafreya thinks, in the ruddy sheen that breaks through the air of inside. The elder shakes her head. “Look at you,” she murmurs, suddenly soft, like the ceasing of the tide, “You have managed to see the worst of the world in such short years, haven’t you?”

 

Humanity, thinks Lunafreya, is the flip side of a coin. Faith, either or. “You cannot hope to cure a disease if you are blind to it,” she says, honestly.

 

“No…” says Theia, “I suppose you cannot. And you are chosen to, say we let the metaphor lay — cure this disease. Are you not?”

 

She remembers her Ascension. Being loped through the eye of a needle, her faith being tested, tested, tested —

 

She remembers: waking, tucked into soft bed sheets that are her own. Her left wrist is bandaged. Her heart is aching. It is aching with the realization of what must come to pass. Her part. The part of someone else, that she cannot interfere with. Her head is swollen with knowledge that is not her own, and a language that is unfathomable.

 

But when she fights to sit up, leaning against the headboard, softly panting — she knows that her resolve is impenetrable. And that it remains her own.

 

That is why she has come here, to these unknown lands, to visit the site of where the Old Gods still remain worshipped. Where the old ways are practiced, are taught. To seek knowledge that has not been gifted her, to learn from the elders that are not of her own people. To find a resolve that has hardened through other means than the conviction that inevitability has given herself.

 

She nods. “By my Gods, I was chosen to be the one to relay to man Their message.”

 

Theia meets her gaze. She inclines her head. “Then let us waste no time meandering over tea and lofty conversation,” she says.

 

*

 

Theia takes her to a glacial grotto in the midst of the forest. A natural cavern steeped in ice, and in faith.

 

She also brings two girls, scarcely more than ten or twelve, with braids in their hair and markings below their eyes, on the curve of their jaws. The girls are quiet, following at a comfortable distance, but there all the same.

 

There are markings on the walls: grand, arching scriptures accompanied by depictions of man, and of animals: of what Lunafreya assumes are the Old Gods, whom Theia speaks of. It tells of chaos and of destruction, of floods and of a tree with climbing branches, with reaching roots. It encompasses several dimensions, curling in on small, filled in-markings of many men in what look like buildings.

 

“This is the world tree,” says Theia, gesturing to the large tree.

 

She has the girls tell Lunafreya of how the world came to be. How the islands are fashioned from the skin and coils of muscle from the first giant, and how the seas are his blood. How the sky belongs in the cradle of his skull. How the mountains have grown from his bones, and how his brain matter dots the sky in cloud.

 

How man comes from organic matter washed ashore, wholly natural, infused with the type of spirit that makes him human.

 

They tell Lunafreya that since man comes from the ocean, there, he will eventually return.

 

She turns to Theia. The elder woman stands a little to the side. Her shoulders are bunched up, as they are — as though she is bracing for an impact that will never come. A quiet violence that makes Lunafreya want to absorb her phantom ache.

 

She says, in the ways of sages and priests, “I will not bend to a people who worship gods that do not honor man’s very foundation. From the trees, we were fashioned, and before that, the ocean carried us ashore.”

 

The elder — no, Lunafreya thinks, the High Priestess’ eyes bore into Lunafreya’s. “I will not bend,” she repeats.

 

 _And neither will you break_ , Lunafreya thinks, as she averts her gaze in humility.

 

*

 

The High Priestess sees her off at the inception of her village. She refuses to be cowed by the appearance of the Empire, so very close to her doorstep. It’s nearing dusk, and the pregnant grey weather has only furthered darkness. The Captain, Lunafreya’s escort, has inched closer, but remains at moderate distance when Lunafreya bids her grateful goodbyes.

 

Theia waves her away. She makes of Lunafreya’s hands, full with books and scripts, tighter curls around the musty bindings, bloated where they’ve been exposed to the humidity of the air. “I will not hear whatever obligations you seem to think you now owe me. Perhaps, in a manner, there is a debt to be collected. But no matter the free spring in your step, you are as much a prisoner as any of us, are you not, Your Majesty?”

 

The old woman’s eyebrow quirks. Lunafreya parts her lips, but in her mouth no words form. She is surprised by the admission, and that surprises her almost more.

 

“Neither age, nor ignorance, has taken me yet, Lunafreya of Tenebrae. Now go — I hope that there is something for you to learn in these scripts. Something that you have never heard of. Or something you may find complements the teachings you have been already taught.”

 

Lunafreya bows her head. “I thank you, High Priestess,” she says, “Both for your hospitality, and for graciously humoring me, even as our beliefs continue to starkly differ. I want to believe that there is the shared, common ground of compassion in all religions. I pray that I find that common ground, as I continue to search.”

 

“It isn’t religion that is at fault for the cruel things we do,” agrees the High Priestess, “So I, too, hope that you will find such a thing, both here and on your continued journey.”

 

The embrace is sudden, but it doesn’t make her draw away.

 

She has to bow to accommodate the old woman, whose silver-infused plait droops down over her shoulder, where she guides Lunafreya’s face when she bends her knees. She smells of the incense and tealeaves that had permeated the hut. Of the river, and the alchemical cleanness of when water freezes into thick blocks of ice.

 

“One does not need to be able to See to know you will stun the world, sweet child of the moon,” murmurs Theia. She presses a kiss to the crown of Lunafreya’s head. “And though I scarcely know you, I am grateful that fate allowed for our paths to coincide, if only once.”

 

Lunafreya thinks that, if there is one injustice in the world, it is that she could not save this woman from the torment that life, perhaps inevitably, brings. And her eyes sting as they part, her throat thick with the snare that has tightened over her lungs.

 

*

 

**756 —**

 

She thinks that it is wrong for a political prisoner of war to consider the act of ruling uncomfortable. Her seat upon her ancestral spot of govern — the high seat of Fenestala Manor, for all intents and purposes her throne — is a charade, a child at play. Tenebrae is no more or less free than she were yesterday.

 

And yet, seated upon it, fashioned out of ash tree and ornate with razor thin gold settings, she knows that today she is not trapped, the way she was yesterday. She feels a degree of separation from the chains which have tethered her to an Imperial escort — to wards at the manor, and to the serration of her brother from her side.

 

She also knows that this throne belongs to her, no more than it did yesterday, but in a truer sense of the word. By Tenebrae’s traditional primogeniture, Lunafreya has been the successor to this throne since she was born. It has always been hers to gain, and never hers to lose.

 

She strokes a palm down one of its arms, smooth with wear and polish. She thinks of mother seated in the same high seat: regal and kind, fair and just. She was an example by which to reverently follow, and Lunafreya cannot possibly hope to ever rise to the same heights.

 

Her mother was born into duty, but she was fashioned into a leader.

 

She looks out over the hall. It is empty, and seems scaled too large because of it. The light of early morning streams through the tall windows that line the walls.

 

She thinks, rising from her seat:

 

It is wrong for a political prisoner of war to consider the act of ruling uncomfortable. But as her mother before her, Lunafreya was born into duty. And now, a month before Chancellor Izunia says that inevitably, she will be travelling east, towards Lucis —

 

She will fashion herself into a leader.

 

*

 

**756, may 14 th —**

 

The Imperial airship is given permission to land in a spot of long, dry desert well outside of the Royal City of Insomnia.

 

Lunafreya disembarks from it with an escort of five soldiers, captain-ranked and above. When the clock approaches seven hundred and thirty hours, they will be joined by the supply envoy that has flown in from Niflheim. “With further means to ride into the city,” said Captain Ledo, before he’d assumed his position at the forefront of the protective diamond that forms around her at all times, unless explicit orders given from higher command to act otherwise.

 

The vehicles that arrive are sleek and silver. Arrow tips poised to be released.

 

Lunafreya rides with Niflheim’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, a crumpled man dressed in his finest garbs. He talks much. She replies politely, always. Takes proper care to quell the restlessness she feels, being in the same crowded space as the men who have taken her lands and her people against their wills.

 

“ — such a long time of unrest and unnecessary bloodshed, as well,” says the Minister, as they pass crawling through the first gateway into the Insomnian region. The city, utterly vast, tall and rising, is still just a swipe of fog on the horizon. It’s too far yet.

 

“The circumstances are truly fortuitous,” replies Lunafreya, feeling almost in absentia, as she struggles to fathom the sheer vastness of the city that beckons ahead. This behemoth of glass, and steel, and stone. And within it —

 

Her destiny, ripe to fulfill.

 

*

 

It’s her fault, forgetting herself. She thinks that she spots something familiar about him, but chalks it up to seeing soldiers by the dozens — their worn eyes, the fatigued moue of their mouths. Their scars, visible despite the amount of clothes and weapons they carry.

 

He drawls in a way she cannot quite place. Foregoes the sharpness in accentuating the words he speaks, but rounds his vowels off in a lilt that she could certainly admit is charming. His voice is soft, and rough all the same. He says Your Highness, and M’lady — and Your Grace, all in the situations that call for him to be a little less formal, a little less staunch, holding himself up by his shoulders and the rote, almost indifferent politeness instilled in him.

 

Lunafreya cannot quite say how it is that she minds that he is — equally insignificantly pleasant as any other soldier she’s ever met that has borne no personal quarrel against her station. He simply is, no more or no less than what is required of a royal escort.

 

But no, she couldn’t say that there is anything familiar about him that she innately places, connects from one place to another.

 

*

 

She only places the significance of his speech pattern when she truly sees him, standing at attention on the roof of the Via Caelum Resort, hands knotted orderly in the curve of his back.

 

The roundness of his vowels is an immigrant scrubbing his encompassing foreign accent from his words. All of his childhood scrapped, put away in boxes. His true identity, rolling off his tongue, forced back down his throat. It is when she sees this that she sees him for what he is: his pleasantness turns prickly, and his inane ability to blend into a crowd stands out as a very particular means to an end. She feels almost scornful of herself, of her ignorance.

 

He is stationed next to the large aquarium tank, rising out of the marbled floor ghostly and pale, blue like capillary veins beneath skin. She doesn’t want to credit seeing him in another light — in the light of disappointment, or of her brewing suspicions, but perhaps she is all too young not to see things for what they truly are without cause to suspect.

 

Lunafreya feels raw, tired in a way she has not felt. There is a scrape of worry in her belly that will not dissipate. A scab of stress that she will not stop picking at, and at the center of it she is at constant war with herself: she is the next in line to the throne. She is the Oracle. She is _Chosen_ , fashioned out of duty and lineage for a purpose and a prophecy she must serve and fulfill. This — what Chancellor Izunia and the Emperor are doing, what King Regis, tired and bent, has so desperately attempted to veto — is a game of power that she must have no part in, not in accordance to what she is destined to do.

 

But, at the same time, she cannot ignore the impact that it could have — what it already has had, on her being able to fulfill this very purpose.

 

“Hello,” she says, situating herself next to him.

 

He is a protector, she thinks, in the way that his eyes gravitate to her, first, and then to their surroundings. Only after he has realized and understood that she has approached him alone, does it occur to him to twitch for something at his waist. Vigilant, now that she is at his side, someone of her statue.

 

He acknowledges her gruffly, without words. Though he inclines his head in a show of respect.

 

The light is sparse, flashes from the fireworks in an array of bright colors only illuminating them at interval. But Lunafreya, nonetheless, sees him now, for what he has come from: the braids curling down towards the nape of his neck. The small tattoos on his jaw, behind his ear. Beneath his eyes. She has not thought of the High Priestess of the lower Galahdian tribe in a very long time. Now, she does.

 

“I fear we were never properly introduced, yesterday,” she says.

 

He levels her with a gaze that is a little hard impressed, a little reserved. “Afraid it’s gonna have to wait, Your Highness,” he says, “I’m — on guard duty.”

 

“Then surely there is no safer place for me to be,” she replies, undeterred.

 

His gaze flickers towards her, him gravitating a little towards her again, despite himself. He lets out a soft breath, and shakes his head, though it feels more resigned, a little amused, as he turns back to observing the scene before them.

 

“May I ask your name?”

 

His voice betrays him of the surprise, at how little he seems to imagine she’d actually care to hoard this information to herself as she wants to. Selfishly.

 

“Uh, Nyx,” he says, “Nyx Ulric,” His gaze flickers to her oncemore, and he adds, “Your Highness.”

 

She allows for herself to catalogue the name to his erect shoulders and quick eyes. His braids and his clean slate-manner of addressing others.

 

She hesitates —

 

“There is something else that I wish to ask you, Nyx Ulric.”

 

*

 

Nyx Ulric confers per a transmittal ear piece with someone he addresses as Commander.

 

“In the absence of Captain Drautos, Sir,” he murmurs, holding a finger to his left ear, “I’m asking your permission in removing Princess Nox Fleuret from the premises. She feels unwell. Sir.”

 

Lunafreya catches the static carrying of someone else’s voice in response, but cannot pick out particulars.

 

Nyx Ulric nods, and gives a noise in affirmation. “Yes Sir,” he says. He glances at her, “And, Commander — I think we’ll need medical assistance. Yessir. Affirmative, Sir — Thank you, Sir.”

 

Nyx Ulric releases the ear piece. He looks to Lunafreya. His mouth is a thin gash of disapproval. “Let’s go, Highness,” he says, leaving her no room to coax something other than a tight coil of suspicion out of his tone.

 

She can’t be sure — her paranoia may be overshadowing what is true and what is not, but at the way out, she could close to swear that the Chancellor’s gaze, crawling and knowing, slides across the expanses of their backs.

 

Nyx Ulric leads her — “You first, Highness,” — down a personnel only-staircase that is scarcely broader and higher than a crawlspace. The stairs are winding, going in spirals. She bites her lower lip almost absently, staring into the snaking of the construction that leads them downwards, and takes care to straighten her back. Anxiety is righting itself like a live noose, laid to rest on her collar, makes a sheen of cold sweat break out on her throat. But Lunafreya only draws a deep, quiet breath. She forces herself to remember that here, in this staircase, leading the way before Nyx Ulric, whom she’s drawn from his orders, but not his duty, she is doing _her_ duty.

 

Her duty is tied to the King whom her mother once swore fealty to. By extension — her duty is to see through what he’s pledged her to do. And her stomach tells her that she needs to go now.

 

She steps off on the first floor. There is a clearly marked exit door straight ahead.

 

“Keep goin’, Princess.” Nyx Ulric does not touch her, but she feels the quiet of his breath at her shoulder. To their left the stairs curve continuously downwards. At no point in her life has it become customary for her to run, but she thinks, as she takes the steps in a hurry, that escape is something one quickly adjusts to. She has lived in fear, but never like this. The fear she has harbored has been quiet, assured that the relinquishing of her freedom will never come at the price of her life.

 

An underground garage meets her. _Of course_ , she thinks, as her guard overtakes her. He shows her to a sleek, black vehicle, sporting four interloping circles as its insignia.

 

Nyx Ulric drives like he is on the run. He skids around corners and breaks speed limits. Roars through intersections and overtakes as many other vehicles he can. When Lunafreya chances a look at him, he looks closed off, his teeth bitten together.

 

“We’re gonna have to dump this at the Citadel. Close by, anyway. I made sure the Commander knows he can send someone after it.” Nyx Ulric pauses, “Not like I could drive it all the way to the front door, anyway.” He looks quickly to her. She just nods in response, unsure of what else to say.

 

The improbability of herself, as her statue thus is, slipping quietly away from the celebrations that partly involve the celebration of her marriage with only one guard at her back, to make her way cross-city per public transportation, is probably what makes it able for them to escape without notice. Nyx Ulric has lent her his jacket, shrugged over her shoulders in part to cover her attire. She has let her hair out of its careful braids, and removed her earrings. She catches a glimpse of herself in the bulging, scratched window of the bus they find themselves on, and thinks that flight makes her look younger than her years. Than how she feels.

 

“Gonna have to walk a few blocks,” says Nyx Ulric. He glances down at her feet, still in the heels she’s worn throughout the day. “You okay?”

 

Lunafreya resists the urge to roll her eyes. Instead she gifts him a bitten off smile, still polite. “My upbringing would be shamed, should I give any outward indication that I’m not capable of walking in a bit of a heel.”

 

Nyx Ulric masks it quickly, but she catches a glimpse of his surprise. She is rewarded with some of the tension bleeding out of his mouth, giving way for a flash of humor. “Never meant to implicate I don’t think you’re good at it.”

 

She allows for her smile to turn genuine, if only slightly. “How gracious of you.”

 

He inclines his head. “Your Highness,” he indicates the doors, next, “This is our stop.”

 

He lives down several flights of stairs, steeped down into the belly of Insomnia. She smells the acrid tang of gasoline and the corroded scent of old train tracks, the deeper they venture. The wind grows coarse around the metal staircase, which rattles where she clenches her fingers around the rails.

 

It’s a small flat at the top of a block building, farthest into the corridor which conjoins into several others. Her feet ache when Nyx finally stops before a door, unmarked, marred with scratches and wear. He slips a key into the lock, wrangles a bit with it before it gives way with a groan.

 

“Afraid the standards aren’t up there with what you’re used to,” he says, by means of what sounds like an apology, when he shows her inside.

 

She would not have taken him for the sort to offer her freely the knowledge that he cares for her opinion on what kind of life he leads.

 

“It is a home,” she says.

 

Nyx snorts. “It’s got a couple of walls and a roof. It’s enough.”

 

He flicks a switch at their adjacent wall. The single light bulb droops from the ceiling, and its light is dim, a little weak. It’s one single room: there is a mattress in the farthest corner, above which hangs a string heavy with laundry. A television screen is on the closest wall, opposite a tall armchair. She notes a collection of newspaper clippings and an assortment of pictures attached to a board, situated on a desk. A single window allows the notion of non-artificial darkness through.

 

She takes her shoes off, leaned against the wall. His jacket slips off her shoulders when she bows down. It’s a little drawn and chilly in the room, as though the wind carries through the walls.

 

When she rights herself again, catching the jacket — it is heavy, thick leather and embellished — she finds that he’s looking at her. His eyes are serious, dark and lined with stress.

 

“Okay,” he says, “Now you’re gonna have to tell me how this all plays out.”

 

*

 

Lunafreya, as part of the rote instilled in her, wakes before dawn.

 

She wraps herself up in a shirt, and climbs out of Nyx’s bed silently, takes care not to make any noise that might rouse him.

 

The soldier himself is stretched out on the sofa that stands snugly against the far wall. It had housed half full cardboard boxes, before, but Nyx had waved away her protests at taking the bed, and shuffled the boxes off to the side.

 

“Your Highness,” he’d said, pointedly, his mouth slanted in a half smile, “I’m not gonna let royalty sleep on my couch.”

 

Lunafreya moves quietly into a place a little more centered in the room. Nyx’s apartment is void of personality, scrubbed clean of anything that might make him known to others by the color of his walls, or per the decoration on them. The half-unpacked boxes makes him seem in transit: as though he is expecting to soon uproot, to move away from this place.

 

She takes a couple of minutes to study her surroundings, while she waits for the hour to turn into dawn. When the sun rises, pink and new, she sits down on the carpet, facing the window — facing south, and prays.

 

It’s a quiet indulgence this time.

 

Even though it’s a part of her routine, something she always, always will do — the absence of people on the other side of her door, beckoning for her attention, or for her to attend to them, is unknown to her.

 

Here, she can sink into the stillness of a city not yet awake. She can face her fears, and doubts. Disclose herself honestly to her Gods, and do so almost in peace.

 

When she is done, she resurfaces slowly from beneath the stillness of her own mind. Of the quiet whispers of those who came before.

 

She immediately feels that his gaze on herself. She finds it curious: feeling the non-intrusive gaze of a man — a rare thing seldom afforded her, someone simply observing her without intention to pry, without the intention to interrupt. It’s — foreign, and weren’t it for the fact that she’s come to known him over this past day as someone who’d not do just so, she’d feel vulnerable in the wake of his gaze unmoving on her. Splayed open.

 

Now, when she opens her eyes, and meets his, she feels that there is a strange intimacy to it. It settles deep in her belly, something new and fraught.

 

He makes no move to words, so neither does she. She rises from the floor, quietly, feeling the light ache in her knees, rolls the stiffness out of the line of her shoulders.

 

“My mom never allowed me to watch her pray. Not until I was old enough to join her. And she’d taught me how to do it myself.”

 

His voice is rough from sleep. When he sits up, Lunafreya observes how his gaze is almost owlish, not yet fully awake.

 

“I have become accustomed to people observing me at all times,” she replies, simply, “I’ve learned that the feeling of unease is a luxury not afforded many people in our world. Not anymore.”

 

He tilts his head, “Got much experience with feeling uneasy, have you, Your Highness?”

 

Lunafreya sits gently on the edge of the bed again, on the exposed mattress, the sheets haphazard in the midst of the bed. “You needn’t patronize me, Nyx Ulric,” she says, voice steady, “The Empire has taken no prisoners in terms of swift and cruel action delivered to its enemies. I realize my stance might have cushioned whatever blows dealt me — removed consequences for being on the wrong side that others would meet, perhaps even in my stead. But I, too, have lost things to this war.”

 

“Things then — not people?”

 

His knuckles, curled around one of the worn leather cushions on the sofa, have whitened. She remembers that he is of Galahd. She remembers being driven through the wetlands, misty and lush, soil rich and river unkempt despite the conflict that ravages around it — through it.

 

“Sorry,” he says, before she has a chance to reply, “I was outta line.” He has stood up. In the darkness of the apartment, the early morning silhouettes him. Makes the hollows in his throat and in his collar seem chalked out by hand, illuminates scars on his ribs, and shades his face until his expression is almost unreadable to her. He moves from the sofa and forward, until he stands by his desk. By the paper clippings he has nailed to the board that sits atop it. He’s looking at something — one of the photographs. From where she sits, this, too, is unreadable.

 

“I’ve been fortunate to meet a lot of people during my travels. Given I’ve been fortunate enough to travel at all. So, I suppose meeting the people of these places has been inevitable. But,” she pauses, and looks at Nyx, “I believe that fortune has led me to meet some truly _special_ people, during these travels.”

 

He has turned from the table, and meets her gaze again. He looks expectant at her continuing, if not at what she has to say.

 

She draws a quiet breath, “I am not very well versed in the Old Religion. My faith has never led me down the path of what used to be. My place, and my duty, is so deeply rooted in the now. I came to Lucis five years ago to seek knowledge that pertains to it. I wanted to know the things that were never taught to me.”

 

In the early dawn of a day that, given what they’ve done — what _she_ has done — most likely will descend into chaos — Lunafreya rises from her seat, perched on the edge of Nyx Ulric’s bed. Something in the line of his shoulders has gone tense. His chin has snapped up, his fingers are gripping the edge of the desk.

 

“I met the High Priestess of the river tribe. She was kind. She took me in and fed my hunger for knowledge when she had little to no reason to see me seated by her hearth at all. I know that this war has been, not kind, to me, but shown me lenience. I know that I am privileged. I know what the Empire did to your home, and to your people, Nyx Ulric, and I wish that I could undo it. But I also believe that there is something that I can do to, if not undo it, then alter it, something that — “

 

His hand closing around her wrist is sudden, and warm, surprising enough to make her words cease in her mouth. When she looks up from it, and to him, again, he is taut like he is drawn on tenterhooks. Like an arrow on a bowstring, quivering with not being let go.

 

She steps up closer to him, allows for his touch on her to serve as something grounding — something that displaces their difference and unites them in the moment as it is. She’s shivering, she notes, almost absently. Her skin pricks, her heart beats on her wrist, beneath his fingers.

 

“The priestess,” he murmurs, almost hoarsely, “Gods — you really, you really gotta namedrop people like that, Highness?”

 

He angles his body away from the desk a little, hand still on her wrist, keeping her in orbit like he is worthy of her full, undivided attention.

 

The photograph, intimate, a portrait of family members for the eyes of family members — makes her lose her breath.

 

She is much younger here, accompanied by what must be a daughter. A sister. He is achingly similar to the both of them. There is not much grey in her hair, and the lines around her mouth and on her brow are not very pronounced. There is no tempered hurt in her eyes, no traces of sleeplessness beneath them. The line of her shoulders is soft. This is, simultaneously, both the woman Lunafreya has met, and not.

 

“I did not — ,” she murmurs, at loss for what to say. _I did not know_ , or _I did not realize_ , they both seem to acknowledge a confession she would rather not make.

 

“Fifteen years,” says Nyx. His grip on her has grown lax, but he has not yet let her go. It makes something untoward curl up in her belly, satisfied despite her insistent ignoring it. “I haven’t seen my mother in fifteen years. ‘S a goddamn lifetime.”

 

She would not put him in more than his very early thirties, or late twenties. She knows that, per her readings, Galahd was invaded in 740, sixteen years ago.

 

But she also knows, that at age thirteen, she stood in the Oracle’s Grove, and watched her mother be slaughtered by Imperial forces. On the occasion that she does have nightmares, she remembers General Glauca’s sword lodged through her mother’s ribcage. The grove alight with fire, the towering general turning its steel-encased head towards her as she ceases running and allows for her hand to slip out of King Regis’ and stops, her tiny breaths quick and panicked but her head held high and her shoulders squared —

 

Lunafreya knows that even if she does not touch the scar that lopes across his left side ribcage, he has them, as much as she has hers. He has no use for her pity.

 

“I only made her very brief acquaintance,” says Lunafreya. She catches her breath, and turns back to the desk, studying the picture oncemore, “But in that time, she made me feel like I could have belonged, had I stayed.”

 

“No one had more faith in the Gods,” says Nyx, “No matter what happened: war, casualties, annexation — she’d say to have faith. Give a little, you get a little. Niffs took it all, but they couldn’t take her faith away from her, you know?”

 

“The first, or last, thing that can be taken from you is your faith,” says Lunafreya, “Be it in the Gods, or in love, or in yourself. Lands can be conquered, but your mother is certainly a case that proves that faith, in most cases, cannot.”

 

Nyx shakes his head. He slants a look down at her, “Feels so weird to have someone — talk about her as if they know her.”

 

“I hardly know her,” she replies.

 

He does not avert his gaze, “I think maybe you know her in a way I don’t. In a way I never could.”

 

When he raises his hand from her wrist, his fingers sloping down the hollow in her throat to settle over the crescent moon in the middle of the chain, she follows it with her eyes. She doesn’t expect it, but neither is she surprised. A quiet admission of what separates them in terms of belief and faith.

 

She looks up at him. His breathing is quiet, his gaze caught on her collar. She reaches up, by her own accord or pulled in by the moment, she can scarcely tell. He does not shy away from her touch, even as she wraps her own fingers around his. Catches them in the crook of her nails, of her skin against his. “Where do you place your faith, Nyx Ulric?”

 

His breath is soft on her face. She notices that from here, his eyes are impossibly blue, and the markings beneath them are accompanied by an array of almost invisible scars, knife sharp, white lines.

 

“Right now?” he murmurs, one eyebrow almost imperceptibly raised, “Where my ma seems to have placed hers. Your Highness.”

 

Lunafreya feels her pulse on the inside of her ribs. Quiet, picking up.

 

Twenty years years ago, her mother Ascended to her position as Oracle. Five years before that, so did she to the position of Queen of Tenebrae, in the wake of her mother before her falling prey to the spring fever.

 

Her mother was born into duty. But she fashioned herself into a leader.

 

Lunafreya looks up into Nyx’s eyes, and sees a spark of trust — perhaps even of faith, that she has not previously seen there. It is the same look she has seen men and women across the country gift her, leading the way forth to those infected that she has come to visit.

 

She will not — has never, given any of them false hope. But she will do what she can. Has always done all that she can.

 

“I cannot promise you safe passage out of here — if you choose to remain with me.”

 

Nyx simply watches her. “All due respect, Your Highness,” he says, wryly, “We’re at war. And — it’s not the first time the Niffs’ve come knockin down my door.”

 

“I cannot promise you safe passage,” she repeats, stubbornly, “But I will promise you this, Nyx Ulric, of the river tribe: I will honor you in accordance with your peoples’ beliefs. From the trees, you were fashioned. And the ocean carried you ashore. From the ocean, man comes, and there he will return. Know that I will not allow for that to change. For _anyone_ to change that.”

 

She does not let go of his fingers. Or he does not let go of hers. There is a beginning in the twine of them that does not see an end.

 

His smile is a little askew, somewhat crooked. She finds that it suits him. “I’ll try to make sure you don’t have to enforce that, Princess. It’s a long way to Galahd, especially from Galdin Quay.”

 

*

 

**Author's Note:**

> my babies!!!
> 
> there is so much head canon in this. lol. it’s barely canon. the entire galahd piece is essentially head canon, borrowed from the pictures that nyx keeps in his apartment (http://imgur.com/zl5yIA0) and the fan theory of galahd’s placement on the lucian map (check dozingcarbs over at tumblr and their posts for what i’m on about).
> 
> as always i feel that Luna Deserved More. more space more story more exploration JUST MORE. and don’t get me started on The LuNyx That Could Have Been
> 
> nyx’s mother’s name comes from thiea, the titan, whom together with hyperion birthed the goddess selene of the moon. hence the moon references!!! bc i’m sappy as all fuck. ignore me. but the fact of the matter remains and cANNOT be ignored: nyx gives his life for two ladies of the moon (by this point yes im gone)
> 
> i’m working on getting my writing mojo back after a summer of non-stop crazy ass work. i’m so sorry for the delays to pretty much all my multi-chapters. they’re coming along. slowly.
> 
> on another (but related) note: i’m looking for a beta. mine’s out of fandom since a while back, so i dw to bother her with stuff she doesn’t know nor care about. feel like nitpicking at grammatical errors, run on-sentences and a shit ton of other mistakes my non-native self feels like doing while writing, as well as generally screaming about this fandom with me? drop me a line per email, or over on twitter.
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/ddelline). where i, by the way, always am.


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